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Why I Love The Arlington

Posted Nov 22, 2022 in Resident Perspectives

Think all lux­u­ry retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties are pret­ty much the same? Then you haven’t met Arling­ton res­i­dent Mike D. Liv­ing here has made a real dif­fer­ence in his life, and he’d like to share some of the very per­sua­sive rea­sons why.

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Here are just a few of the reasons…

Loca­tion: the sur­round­ing area to The Arling­ton is close to coun­try style living…I most appre­ci­ate the land­scapes when tak­ing my 4 ¹⁄₂ mile bike ride around the ​“block”. I can ride ​“off cam­pus” on wide side­walks, encoun­ter­ing vir­tu­al­ly no traf­fic, through beau­ti­ful­ly land­scaped boule­vards, palm trees, col­or­ful shrub­bery, grassy expanses…beautiful!

Out­door Views and Sounds: whether at an apart­ment or home, the chirp­ing of birds scram­bling through the trees are all that inter­rupt the rel­a­tive quiet­ness since we are away from major high­ways, air­ports and busi­ness­es. The views are golf cours­es, trees, lakes and man­i­cured land­scapes. On clear evenings, you can see the stars and the moon and a quiet­ness inter­rupt­ed only by the crick­ets and frogs.

39 Gor­geous Acres of lakes and cam­pus, com­posed of 175 homes and apart­ments, mak­ing it large enough to give you a feel­ing of expanse, yet small enough for you to know your neigh­bors on a first name basis. Walk­ing paths with strate­gi­cal­ly locat­ed park bench­es, over­look­ing the many lakes, allow for peace­ful rest breaks.

Pop­u­la­tion: being a small­er com­mu­ni­ty encour­ages res­i­dents to engage with each oth­er and social­ize, which has been shown to be a key ingre­di­ent for the elder­ly for a long, hap­py and healthy life. The folks at The Arling­ton are friend­ly and vis­i­bly hap­py to be here and hav­ing diverse back­grounds makes inter­ac­tion even more interesting.

Enter­tain­ment: the AON cal­en­dar fea­tures con­cert and pop pianists, singing groups, vocal­ists, come­di­ans, casi­no night, bar­be­cues, wine tast­ings, vocal­ists both sin­gles and duos, orga­nized bus trips to the­aters, restau­rants, etc. Lec­tures by cruise boat speak­ers, music pro­fes­sors, FGCU Acad­e­my speak­ers, MEDIC­ITV pre­sen­ta­tions, Ted Talks and the list goes on.

Col­lier SW Library: direct­ly across the street and, besides the usu­al library offer­ings, has a full slate of speak­ers i.e.; Ted Talks, etc., which com­ple­ment those pro­vid­ed with­in the Arling­ton. If there is a sub­ject one wish­es to know more about, they can reserve a seat for future lec­tures on any par­tic­u­lar topic.

Water Activ­i­ties: an Olympic sized indoor swim­ming pool allows res­i­dents to enjoy swim­ming laps, orga­nized aqua- aer­o­bics class­es or just soak­ing. The pool is com­ple­ment­ed by an over­sized spa. If you pre­fer the out­doors, the Club­house pool and spa are per­fect, com­fort­ably sur­round­ed by lounge chairs and cabanas and ser­viced by the Club­house staff, offer­ing a vari­ety of drinks, snacks, sal­ads and sandwiches.

Oth­er Out­door Activ­i­ties: include state-of-the-art Boc­ce courts, shuf­fle­board and a chip­ping and putting green. Dur­ing sea­son (Octo­ber to May), near­ly a dozen four per­son teams com­pete at Boc­ce, capped with an end-of-the-sea­son awards ban­quet with trophies.

Salon: every­one appre­ci­ates the con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed Salon, where you can get a hair­cut, perm, hair­do, man­i­cure, pedi­cure, mas­sage, etc., from first class professionals.

Health­care IL Clin­ic: we appre­ci­ate the con­ve­nience of hav­ing nurs­es and doc­tors avail­able for Inde­pen­dent liv­ing res­i­dent needs. Ser­vices include Covid tests, blood work, blood pres­sure test­ing, first aid, con­sul­ta­tion, pre­scrip­tions, etc. For total con­ve­nience, you can choose one of the doc­tors to be your pri­ma­ry care physi­cian. Peri­od­ic vis­its by var­i­ous spe­cial­ty doc­tors, includ­ing podi­a­trists, den­tists, etc., add to our con­ve­nience. Pet groomers are also among the vis­it­ing services.

Club­house: as men­tioned ear­li­er, the Club­house is a great ​“get­away” with its bar and grill and an offer­ing of snacks, sal­ads and sand­wich­es. A lim­it­ed depth pool and spa pro­vide a great way to cool off and are com­pli­ment­ed by cabanas, lock­er room and shower.

AON Din­ing Rooms: four venues for din­ing; Exhi­bi­tion Restau­rant fea­tures our gift­ed Chef’s cre­ations, an array of gourmet four course din­ners, home­made desserts and express din­ing for those who enjoy a buf­fet and are on a sched­ule. Des­ti­na­tion Din­ing room is avail­able for pri­vate par­ties. Bistro 7900 is very pop­u­lar and chal­lenges many fam­i­ly restau­rants. It opens at 7 AM offer­ing a vast menu of break­fast favorites, then clos­es for a half hour, then reopens to become a full-ser­vice lun­cheon restau­rant, offer­ing full meals, sal­ad bar, sand­wich­es, piz­za, etc. And final­ly, what is there not to love about the Pub? Here you have a ful­ly stocked bar and tasty pub menu with piz­za, burg­ers, wings, etc., allow­ing you to vis­it with your neigh­bors over a drink and dine in the Pub or din­ing room.

Indoor Activ­i­ties: an end­less array of activ­i­ties is there for the tak­ing. Besides lec­tures men­tioned ear­li­er, the Cin­e­ma Room offers a vari­ety of pre­sen­ta­tions includ­ing his­tor­i­cal, health, trav­el, etc. There are book clubs, edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams, bin­go, triv­ia, movies, par­ties, dances and an array of many card games includ­ing bridge, pok­er, dou­ble soli­taire, Mahjong, etc.

Game Room: besides fea­tur­ing a full-size pool table and bumper pool table, you can find count­less board games, too many to list…if you can’t find a game here that you like…you’re just not look­ing! It is a great place to enter­tain vis­it­ing grandchildren.

Fit­ness Room: pro­fes­sion­al­ly appoint­ed fit­ness room with state-of-the-art equip­ment pro­vides vir­tu­al­ly any exer­cise one could want. Com­put­er cards allow us to go to any par­tic­u­lar machine, insert the card and it auto­mat­i­cal­ly resets to the point we last used it.

Aer­o­bics Rooms: the Aer­o­bics room is staffed by qual­i­fied instruc­tors, who hold reg­u­lar class­es for bal­ance, palates, weights, stretch bands, etc. A ping-pong table is set up on week­ends when there are no aer­o­bics classes.

Cul­tur­al Arts Cen­ter: hub of a vari­ety of activ­i­ties. Sun­day church ser­vices start the week off, then sched­uled events i.e. Men’s Movie Nite with beer and pop­corn, Chick Flicks for the ladies with cheese and wine and then movies every Sat­ur­day and Sun­day evenings. It is here that the major activ­i­ties are held, i.e. dances, par­ties, lec­tures, etc.

Art Room: a fan­tas­tic out­let for those who have cre­ative tal­ent. An art teacher comes in once a week and instructs the class on the fin­er details of cre­at­ing art forms. Many of the stu­dents have excelled and now dis­play their works on the walls of the mail area.

Ther­a­py Room: con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed on the first floor, this area fea­tures ful­ly staffed ther­a­pists using high tech equip­ment to pro­vide vir­tu­al­ly end­less types of ther­a­py for every need and accepts most insur­ance and Medicare.

Physi­cian’s Region­al Hos­pi­tal: a rel­a­tive­ly new state-of-the-art full-ser­vice facil­i­ty, is less than a half mile away sur­round­ed by the offices of hun­dreds of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als. CT, MRI scans and oth­er diag­nos­tic facil­i­ties are also just a cou­ple blocks away. The logis­tics of The Arling­ton can­not be under­stat­ed and are a huge advan­tage for a senior liv­ing community.

Health­care Pavil­ion: the crowned jew­el of The Arling­ton, avail­able to all res­i­dents for short stays while recov­er­ing from surgery or full-time care. Every res­i­dent is promised a place in the appro­pri­ate area, when need­ed. This area offers a full staff of pro­fes­sion­als, who can han­dle vir­tu­al­ly every need includ­ing assist­ed liv­ing, skilled nurs­ing & mem­o­ry care. Being only steps away from Inde­pen­dent Liv­ing, the con­ve­nience offered here is price­less. Hav­ing an on-cam­pus health­care facil­i­ty is an impor­tant advan­tage for liv­ing at The Arling­ton, res­i­dents need­ing to relo­cate to this area can eas­i­ly be vis­it­ed by their loved one and/​or friends, with­out them hav­ing to leave the cam­pus. This allows a spouse con­ve­nient, mul­ti­ple vis­its in a sin­gle day with­out ever need­ing a car, and are then able to walk back and live an inde­pen­dent life.

Staff: last but not least, the entire man­age­ment and staff at The Arling­ton are won­der­ful, sin­cere and ded­i­cat­ed people…and friends. I can­not say enough, except we are very for­tu­nate to live in such a great, friend­ly com­mu­ni­ty with the best staff we could ever want.

There you have it-The Arling­ton has every­thing we could pos­si­bly want, and then some!

— M. David­i­an ⁹⁄₂₂

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